VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) Click Below for Plug-ins:

In the previous article I walk through step by step to create a plug-in object type leveraging the Plug-in Generator version 2.In this article I will demonstrate one of the new feature of this version 2 : Create a child object type.

In a previous article I have explained how Dynamic Types work and how these are very useful to create a vCO / vRO plugin that will enable the XaaS capabilitites of vCAC / vRA.Then explained how to build your own twitter plug-in using the plug-in generator package. I have now extended the capabilities of the plug-in generator and will attempt to demonstrate these in this new series of articles. This article use NSX as the orchestrated endpoint but following the explanation included on this tutorial you should be able to get it to work with many REST web service.

Okay now I have provided Python and perl articles to start a vRealize Orchestrator (vRO / vCO) workflow via it's REST API so now it's time for a PowerShell script. For this article, I followed the same format as the previous two BUT provided the option to call the script with command line parameters! You may download the script in this article from my vroClientScripts Repository on GitHub.

In a previous article, I taught you how to explore and use the REST API to start a Workflow using a generic browser based REST Client. In this article, I will provide a Python based example of running the "Create a Record" workflow that was created in Part 2 of my SQL Plug-in Dynamic Types Simple CMDB for vCAC article. Since I'm not even close to being proficient with Python, this will be a very short article! You may download the script in this article from my vroClientScripts Repository on GitHub. Be sure to check out that repo because my colleague has provided a better written Python module there for calling workflows.

Welcome back! This is the third article of a multi-part series that steps you through the process of exposing our workflows from the last article to vRealize Automation's (vRA) Advanced Service Designer (ASD).

Introduction

This third article will cover the following topics:

How to add the simple CMDB to vRealize Automation's Advanced Service Designer

vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) is frequently used with Network related automation which may involve working with IP Addresses. From an end user perspective, it is nice to specify a range of addresses such as 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.100 rather than having to specify all addresses. I found some simple Javascript in this Converting IP Addresses article that is easily adapted to vRO. You can use the code included in this article to either return an array of addresses in the range specified, or simply it by returning the total number of addresses in the range. Either way, I hope you find this code helpful in your workflows.

NUC Lab Kit

Below are my thoughts for a vSAN nuc lab. Since I already have cables, not including them here. I ordered (and received by Nov 30, 2016)3 x nuc, 3 x 32GB Crucial mem, 3 x Toshiba NVMe drive, 3 x Startech USB to GB NIC, and 3 x Crucial 1TB SSD. I've also been very happy with my Cisco SG300-10 so I bought one more since my existing one only has one port available. Each of the items listed here are linked below - all were purchased using the provided links below.single NIC (See this post for details on using the USB -> GB NIC item listed below

I stayed with the i5 for the power consumption and form factor vs. the i7 Skull Canyon ;)